I spent a few hours the other night trying to track down a Labubu as a birthday gift for Phoenix.
Not because she actually wants one; I do.
I think it's hilariously ironic to put it on your kid’s State backpack instead of a Birkin, and I really want her to roll into camp/school with it. You know, alongside all the moms with the ones hanging off their handbags.
But truthfully, I love this trend, but not enough to stand in line for hours for what is essentially a toy. The absolutely wild thing is we were perusing a fully stocked wall of them in London earlier this year—apparently before the craze went mainstream.
My husband secretly not so secretly LOVES Pop Mart, but walking in anywhere covered in things to buy with two small children results in epic-level tantrums. Oh, if only we did get it when P whined she wanted something, anything from the store.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Speaking of Birkin bags, my favorite substack (outside of my own), Back Row, posed the question “Is The Birkin Overexposed?” to Hermès bag owners, and well, yes, it’s a bit much. Birkins have been all over the news recently as the original Birkin bag, designed by actress and activist Jane Birkin and named after her, sold at auction for $10.1M (all in with the fees) last week.
Rumors swirled that Kim K. or Lauren Sanchez Bezos would be the winners. Seriously, though, around the time Kim K. has made something popular and Lauren Sanchez Bezos has landed her tacky self on the cover of Vogue in a wedding dress by the problematic Dolce & Gabbana, maybe we just can’t have nice things anymore.
“I find it to be so incredibly cringe that this is the flex.”
My favorite quote in the Back Row piece is from Bethenny Frankel, a former Real Housewife, talking about how every Real Housewife has one now and proceeds to flaunt it on their respective shows: “The bags could be Housewives themselves.”
Frankel goes on: “I find it to be so incredibly cringe that this is the flex. I sold 50 handbags just as a result of being nauseated by myself.”
Sometimes I find her redeeming. I KNOW.
I have only a .05% desire for one of these. (I’d opt for the Kelly but now that people are wearing mini Kellys to their weddings instead of a proper evening bag, I’m tiring quickly.) But I find the entire obsession fascinating. If you are up for it, there is a fantastic and comprehensive four-hour long podcast about Hermès and how they built the lore. I also suggest the LVMH episode because they talk about Hermès there too!
On a side note, Jane Birkin’s biographer notes that Jane would be amused by the Labubu trend, and that is oddly satisfying. I’ll continue my hunt.
Meanwhile, in wealthy circles the other new flex is where you are shopping for groceries in the Hamptons. The New York Times covered the “grocery wars” out east, complete with $400 musk melons, and I wish I had been a fly on the wall with this reporter just creepily hanging out at stores and looking at what people buy with such judgment.
I find these types of stories amusing in that the reporters seemingly have no historic knowledge of what they are covering and come at it with such naivete. Take the melon. The Japanese have been cultivating and selling expensive fruit for eons now, and how is that someone that supposedly covers wealth and power is surprised to learn about this? I didn’t even flinch.
“I’m a slave to Round Swamp. Their prices are insane but it’s still cheaper than going out.”
NY Mag/The Cut has also been on a tirade about the Hamptons set, and as a journalist, I find it all to be so contrived. They want to hate, and they mask it as objectivity. I’m no outward proponent of Hamptons life after spending a good decade out that way myself, but let people spend their money however they want and eat a delicious melon.
On that note, I have transitioned to upstate life, which, as a recent meme suggested, we may tell ourselves is less bougie than the Hamptons, but in many ways it’s not. One afternoon spent shopping in Rhinebeck, and I discovered just how marked up the home goods are in the cute local boutiques.
I went home and ordered the items I wanted directly from the designers/artisans for MUCH less than the price in the store. Support the artist > support local. The farm stand sold more branded artisan goods (most not even from Hudson Valley!) then it did fresh local produce, which was slightly unnerving.
But the key lime pie from Chef Dan was pretty good, even if he did import the key limes. (Last I checked, key limes don’t grow up this way.)
Airmail recently ran a story on the Napa-fication of Hudson Valley, complete with imagery from the very Instagrammy but entirely manufactured Wildflower Farms by Auberge and a Ken Fulk-designed manor house at Klocke Estate which eerily reminds me of the Cotswolds, in the English countryside.
“These days, it’s not uncommon to read that a Michelin-starred chef has taken over a 4 Bros Pizza or that a hotel’s modernist suite (in a former nursing home) is going for $1,200 a night.”
The nursing home, though.
I think the author may have gotten the comparison wrong. As a devotee of Troutbeck (we have been more than a few times), I’d say the entire place reminds me less of the DisneyWorld that is Napa Valley (where I have also been dozens of times) and more of hipster Brooklyn transplanted to the countryside. People are decidedly not flaunting their Hermès bags, even if they could buy one.
Not to mention, there isn’t actually good wine and I doubt there ever will be. It’s just not a wine-making terroir. Don’t @ me.
On the flipside, I read a takedown piece about the Caribbean island of Canouan, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled as I WANTED TO WRITE THIS MYSELF a few years ago.
In 2022, I was invited to the Mandarin Oriental Canouan on a press trip. It was billed as the new Mustique, an island where Bezos and DiCaprio had pulled up in yachts. It didn’t quite have the mainstream name as its neighbor Mustique, and that was why I was getting an exclusive invite from the newly minted PR firm billed with getting the island in front of editors.
Sounds great at face-value, but upon landing, I quickly realized WHY a publicity team was hired. Everything was off. The vibes weren’t there. There was a build up of seaweed on the beach. Every restaurant was almost empty (or entirely empty). When inquiring, I was just told it was the off-season—except it was April and very much the on-season at other islands.
The publicity team touted how billionaires stay here because of the service but that so-called service was really lacking. Our butler was regularly MIA. When we did see him, he’d gossip about previous famous guests—by name.
Every luxury destination trades on discretion. This place had none.
It did, however, have a lot of turtles. I’ll remember them fondly.
“You would need to come from the moon to want to buy something there right now.”
Like any good journalist, I did some digging. Turns out the island was in deep financial distress, as reported at the time by Robb Report. Some billionaire developers were in lawsuits. The hotel where we stayed had changed flags several times. Even Trump(!) had pulled out of the place. There were no planes on the new runaway and no yachts in sight at the new harbor. It seemed to back up everything I was experiencing, right down to the hotel-hosted wine soiree at a villa they were trying to sell.
In fact, the whole reason Canouan exists is that some billionaire was butt-hurt that Mustique wouldn’t let him build a house. So he bought the closest island, Canouan.
I politely declined to pen anything about the trip, given it wasn’t up to the standards that made me feel positive about promoting it, especially for weddings.
Upon my return home, though, my Instagram was flooded with influencers, travel editors, and even wedding planners(!) visiting the hotel property and raving about the experience.
“I lived like a Billionaire on Canouan.” 👀
No one should trust travel journalism these days. And if a wedding planner fooled me into booking a destination wedding there, I’d sue for false advertising.
But it seems that the prospective clients had already heard through the rumor mill.
Airmail penned an expose of Canouan, and yes, they are still trying to sell those villas. No one is buying because no one wants to be there. The three-comma set, and their multi-millionaire compatriots, are clubby, and there are plenty of other Caribbean enclaves to satisfy them (Bermuda, Jumby Bay, Harbour Island, even Turks). It seems Canouan is no longer one of them.
As one homeowner said: “You would need to come from the moon to want to buy something there right now.”
Instead, you could purchase the most expensive home in the Caribbean…on none other than nearby Mustique. Where there actually are yachts.
Until next time, I’m back to searching for a Labubu—and a musk melon.
Any leads appreciated 🥂